Carrier route record

YXORD→ORF

Republic Airways · Chicago to Norfolk

Flights: 428
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 23%
Carriers: 6

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Republic Airways.

Republic on ORD to ORF lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 428 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 397 at 83.2% on time.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Republic on ORD to ORF from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

77.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 421 completed flights

Avg delay

73 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.40%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

71.8%

Every carrier on ORD to ORF, 1,863 flights

These figures cover 428 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.

Carrier by carrier

Republic against every carrier on ORD to ORF

Republic flew 428 of the 1,863 flights on ORD to ORF, about 23% of it. Its 77.4% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 71.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 83.2% to PSA at 52.4%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 83.2% of the time; United Airlines manages 66.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 690 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on ORD to ORF
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Air	397	83.2%	51 min	2.02%	B
Republic Airways (this page)	428	77.4%	73 min	1.40%	B
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	156	69.3%	51 min	1.92%	C
United Airlines	690	66.9%	70 min	1.74%	C
American Airlinesthin sample	6	66.7%	39 min	0.00%	C+
PSA Airlinesthin sample	186	52.4%	89 min	10.75%	F−

The spread between Envoy and United is 16 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 16 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

Departure window

When Republic runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 22 points, against 16 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am63 flights90.5%
8am–11am67 flights83.6%
11am–2pm54 flights75.5%
2pm–5pm111 flights78.4%
5pm–8pm104 flights68.4%
8pm–5am29 flights—

Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 90.5% of the time, against 68.4% for the evening window. That is 22 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 111 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Republic on ORD to ORF through the year

Jul–Sep 2025165 flights71.6%
Oct–Dec 2025148 flights77.7%
Jan–Mar 202618 flights—
Apr–Jun 202697 flights86.0%

Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 77.4% on time across 428 flights.

Republic on ORD to ORF did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 86.0% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 71.6%, a swing of 14 points on roughly 143 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 87.1% on time and Saturday the weakest at 69.2%. 18 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Republic runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 52% of the 6,942 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.

Late-arriving aircraft
52%
Carrier
21%
National Airspace System
15%
Extreme weather
12%

Extreme weather accounts for 12% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 1.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 6,942 reported delay minutes.

52% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 6,942 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit.

Cancellations sit at 1.40% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.23%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.

The 717 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.

The return leg runs 75.8% on time across 430 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 428 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.

What to do with this

Booking Republic on ORD to ORF

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 428 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 77.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 421 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures